Conseable types

[robkuz]

Is there a standard static member for types that are Conseable? In principle anything that can be mapped to a List or Seq could be conseable. No?

[gusty]

Yes, looks like it can be added to the Collection abstraction which represents everything that is List-like but doesn't fit well in the Monoid or Foldable which are the preferred abstractions.

However I think its use will be more theoretical than practical since cons is an operation that is a bit tied to the structure, I mean for linked lists is natural and cheap but for sequences is not.

Do you have an interesting problem to be solved with a generic cons ?

[gusty]

This might be relevant: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11437269/haskell-append-type-class

[wallymathieu]

I felt like cons operator would be nice when dealing with List, DList and NonEmptyList

[cannorin]

Vectors (#192) will also benefit from this.

[gusty]

What would be such generic operator or method name?

[cannorin]

Maybe Unfoldable? (vectors are not going to follow the laws, though...)

[gusty]

So you mean to add the generic insert function?

[wallymathieu]

Would insert make sense from a f# / .net perspective ?

[gusty]

To me insert sounds more like insert something somewhere in the middle. It's not clearer than cons and snoc which tells exactly where the insertion is going to happen.

[wallymathieu]

Perhaps that the abstraction should be called Unfoldable and then we could add cons or add.

[gusty]

Note that the name of the abstraction is only relevant for our docs as they are not reflected in the code, more than maybe a filename.